Work Text:
I.
Rifts and Fwhip meet biweekly at the Drip. They talk, companionable, about pasts that will never reach them.
“I think about it sometimes. Going deeper into the tunnels.”
“Would you?” Rifts asks.
“No. But I wonder.”
“I think,” Rifts murmurs, not thinking it at all, “that’s what this city is for. You wonder about it. What is here? What might we find?”
“Pix,” Fwhip says. He never got the hang of Excerpts, swaps Rifts’s names around like juggling batons.
“Yes, Fortune’s?”
“Only one of me. Only one of you. Don’t go back out there, okay? Don’t disappear on us again.”
II.
“Oh my days, you come in through the window?”
Gem rises gracefully, which would be more impressive if her sunglasses weren’t hanging off one ear. “Sometimes.” She shrugs, adjusts the glasses. “Lights were on.”
Rifts turns off the stove.
“I thought it was you,” Gem says, looking over the meal arranged on the kitchen counter: rice, fried veggies, one honey-drizzled pastry on a separate plate.
“Didn’t get everything done early enough this time,” Rifts chuckles.
“If you keep this up,” Gem murmurs, “I might start expecting it.”
“I hope you do. I know—about having good things to come back to.”
III.
Checkers night.
“You took my frog!”
“I was going to make you another. I needed to check how I did the legs last time.”
“Pix, that was my favourite frog!”
“It’s your only frog. Your move, Oli.”
Oli slumps. “No, I’m going to lose, I can see it already.” He rolls dramatically out of his chair, rattling the checkers board. Shuffles dismally to his bed. “You monster. If you hurt him—”
“It’s ceramic.”
“Bring him back!”
“I will. I promise.”
“Good.” Oli mutters, eyes closing. “I—missed you.” Laid out on his bed like he’s never moving from that spot again.